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  We all turn toward him. He seems . . . great. I can’t imagine where he’s been all day, but he is sort of, well, glowing. He is radiant.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  My mom swings her dish towel over her shoulder. “And where have you been all day?”

  Holden’s face falls. “What do you mean?”

  “The school called. You weren’t there today.”

  “Oh.”

  My mom sighs. “Skipping already, Holden? On the second day? You can’t do this, honey.”

  “What did you tell them? Did you tell them I was home sick?”

  My mom shrugs. “I’m not going to do this again, Holden. You’ve used up your Get Out of Jail Free card today. There are no more.”

  I can’t believe my mom actually covered for him! And from the sound of it, this isn’t the first time.

  Holden shrugs again. “Thanks.”

  “We need to talk about why you skipped school on the second day,” my mom says.

  He looks at me accusingly.

  “I didn’t say anything!” I say.

  My mom turns to me. “You know something about this, Fern?”

  The glow on Holden’s face is gone.

  “Holdy has a pwoblem,” Charlie says again, matter-of-factly.

  “Shut up, Charlie,” I say. I turn to Holden. “I swear I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what, Fern? What are you two hiding?” my mom asks.

  “Just forget it!” Holden storms away and up to his room.

  “Come back here!” my mom yells. But his door slams, and we all know he’s not coming back. She comes closer to me. “Are you going to fill me in on what’s going on?”

  I shake my head, even though I want to tell her. I want to make her fix it. But I promised.

  “Sara?” she asks.

  “You need to ask him,” she says. But instead of going upstairs, my mom goes back to the kitchen.

  “Ferny, you play with me,” Charlie says from the floor.

  Sara bolts up before I can answer. “Have fun!” she says, sauntering into the kitchen after my mom.

  Charlie pushes the trap that releases the checkers, laughing as they clank on top of each other into a heap. But I hardly pay attention. Am I the only one who cares that Holden is upset?

  “Me first!” Charlie whines.

  I guess so.

  AT DINNER, Holden doesn’t look at me. At any of us. He probably wouldn’t have even come to dinner, but my dad’s home, and, unlike my mom, my dad would never let Holden get away with skipping a family meal.

  I watch my dad take a bite of my mom’s sesame tofu and green-bean salad. He makes the strangest face as he chews, as if he’s trying to guess what he’s eating. I notice my mom watching him closely, almost challenging him to complain. Sometimes I think the reason he stays at the restaurant during dinner isn’t because it’s so busy but because it means he can have a tofu-free meal.

  “So, how’s school going so far, you two?” he asks. He moves two tofu chunks to the side of the plate. It reminds me of something Charlie would do.

  “Same ol’ same ol’,” Holden says quietly.

  I look over at my mom to see if she’ll rat Holden out, but she pretends to concentrate on cutting Charlie’s food.

  “What about you, Ferny?” my dad asks.

  I shrug.

  “Jeez. Why is everyone so gloomy?”

  Charlie drops his spoon and smiles an amazingly sweet smile at my dad. His mouth opens wide, and a piece of tofu falls out.

  “That’s disgusting,” I say.

  Charlie frowns. His bottom lip starts to quiver the way it always does before he cries.

  “Fern, honestly,” my mom says. “Do you have to be so mean to him?”

  What?

  I look over to Holden for help and remember he’s mad at me, too. I bite my own lip to keep it from quivering.

  “OK, something’s going on here, and I want to know what,” my dad says.

  We’re all quiet.

  “I’m waiting.”

  Finally Holden puts his fork down. “Apparently everyone thinks I have a problem.”

  “Honey, of course we don’t,” my mom says in her usual calm way.

  “It was just a misunderstanding,” Sara adds.

  “It was!” I say.

  Holden pushes back his chair.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” my dad asks.

  “Away from here.” He stands up.

  “Holden,” I say. “It’s not what you think. We were just talking about —”

  “Me. Behind my back.”

  “No! Well, yes, but —”

  He doesn’t wait to hear more. He stomps to the front door and slams it shut behind him.

  “Does someone want to tell me what that was all about?” my dad asks.

  No one does.

  He looks at each of us, but we all pretend to get very interested in our food.

  “We’ll talk later,” my mom says quietly.

  After dinner, I call Ran. I want to tell him everything that happened, but for some reason I just don’t have the energy. Instead, we talk about our new math teacher, Mr. Hand. Ran says that Mr. Hand seems very smart and that we’re going to learn a lot this year. He tells me that geometry is very abstract. I don’t even know what that means, but it feels good to just listen to Ran’s calm voice. Ran never gets worried about anything. He has this thing he calls a mantra. “All will be well,” he’s always saying. I think a lot of other people would think this made Ran kind of a freak. But when he tells me all will be well, it calms me and makes me believe it. And now I realize how badly I need to hear those words.

  “I had a really awful day today,” I tell him when he finally stops listing the benefits of geometry.

  “Tell me.”

  So I explain about the bus and Holden and the Things, and getting dropped off too far from the stop. When I finish, he’s quiet for a little while. I listen to him breathing, thinking.

  “Fern,” he finally says, “you’ve had a hard day. But all will be well.”

  I take a deep breath in and out, too. As if I am trying to breathe in his words.

  “I really don’t want to ride the bus tomorrow,” I tell him.

  “Then don’t.”

  “But how will I get to school?”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he tells me, as if it’s that simple.

  “Which is?”

  “I’m not sure. But you’ll figure it out.” I can tell he’s ready to end our conversation, because he always changes his tone of voice. It gets slower and quieter. As if he’s reading me a bedtime story.

  “All will be well,” he says again. “Remember.”

  “OK,” I say. I want to make him promise. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” he answers quietly. “Good night.”

  I try to stay up until I hear Holden come back in, but the next thing I know, Charlie is rapping on my door, telling me it’s time to get ready for school. I hear him run down the hall and do the same on everyone else’s door. If I did that, Sara and Holden would kill me.

  Downstairs I start to eat a fake Pop-Tart. When my mom bought them, she insisted they would taste just like the “bad” kind. I start to chew and gag on the cardboard-tasting organic crust. I quickly grab Charlie’s juice cup and swallow it down.

  “Noooooo, Fern!!” Charlie wails. “Mooommmmyyyy!”

  By now I am in no mood to make things right, so I dump the cup in the sink and get him a new one just as my mom drags herself into the kitchen.

  “What now?” she asks.

  “Fern stole my juice!” Charlie cries.

  “I was choking!” I say. “Don’t be such a baby.”

  “Oh, honestly, Fern. He is a baby.”

  “He’s three!”

  Charlie sniffs. “You not nice, Ferny.”

  “Don’t call me Ferny,” I say. “I’m sick of it.”

  “Fern,” my mom says, disgusted.<
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  Charlie bangs his new cup on his high chair, which he is way too big for.

  “Where’s Holden?” my mom asks.

  “In the shower.” I go to the downstairs bathroom to brush my teeth. In our house, you have to have stuff like toothbrushes in both bathrooms in case one is occupied and you’re in a hurry. When I’m done, I leave the house without saying good-bye.

  I wait alone at the end of the driveway. I try to kick a stone across the road but stub my toe on the pavement instead. I’m probably the only person in history to stub her toe on a flat surface.

  The screen door slams up at the house. Holden walks toward me with his head tucked down, his hands in his pockets. When he reaches the end of the driveway, he kicks a pebble across.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” I say.

  He’s quiet.

  “We weren’t talking about you in the way you think.”

  “What way were you talking about me, then?”

  “We were just . . .” I can’t figure out how to explain. He’s right. We were talking about him behind his back. And probably no way is a good way.

  “Never mind,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  He sighs and goes to the side of the driveway to find more pebbles to kick. He sends one sailing across the pavement and into the grass on the other side. A dog in our neighbor’s yard barks and comes over, but he can’t get too close because of the invisible fence they put up. He eyes the spot where the stone landed and whimpers.

  “Poor ol’ trapped thing,” Holden says.

  He looks both ways and crosses the street, then finds a stick near a tree and throws it to the dog, who catches it perfectly. He drops it just at the edge of where the fence must be and wags his tail. “Sorry, bud. That’s all I have time for,” he says, and walks back over to me.

  “So, how was the ride without me yesterday?” he asks.

  “What do you think?”

  “Same ol’ same ol’?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “No?”

  “I punched Thing One in the face.”

  His mouth drops open. “Thing One?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I call those jerks who hassle you. I took your seat yesterday, and they said stuff to me I didn’t like. So, I punched one of them.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  I shrug.

  “What’d they do after?”

  “Nothing. Just gave me dirty looks.”

  He shakes his head. “What about Trudy? She didn’t kick you off for belting one of her nephews?”

  This time my mouth drops open. “Her nephews?”

  “Yeah. Austin and Tyler McCready. She’s their aunt.”

  The familiar squeal of brakes sounds in the distance.

  “We can’t get on that bus,” I say. “No wonder she skipped our stop yesterday.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She drove past our stop. She waited till she got all the way down the hill before she pulled over so I had to walk up.”

  “She’s evil. You’re lucky she didn’t kick you off the bus forever.”

  “That would have been great! Then we wouldn’t have to ride it anymore. Anyway, I bet she can’t because the video on the bus would show her nephews pinging my ears before I belted one of them.”

  “They did what?”

  “You know.” I ping the air to show him.

  He looks up and down the road. “We gotta get out of here.”

  “You can’t skip again. Mom and Dad will kill you.”

  “Who said anything about skipping? We just need to find a different way to get to school. Come on.”

  He runs back up the driveway, kind of hunched over, as if that will actually prevent anyone from seeing him. I follow.

  By the side of the garage, we pant, catching our breath while the bus drives by.

  “Why don’t we just ask Dad for a ride? He hasn’t left for work yet, right? Or Mom?”

  “No,” Holden says. “Too much explaining.”

  “Sara?”

  He cringes. Sara has her license, just no car. She could easily drive us and be back in time for her, my mom, and Charlie to get to the restaurant.

  “She’s our only hope,” I say.

  “OK. But just tell her we missed the bus, all right?”

  “She’s annoying, not stupid.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Just don’t bring it up. She’s so smug. I don’t want her to feel like she’s saving us.”

  “Fine.” I peek through the kitchen window. My mom is putting jam on an English muffin, and Charlie is drinking from his new cup. I duck down and race to the back door, where I can slip in and go up to Sara’s room.

  She’s sound asleep. Her room smells like five different kinds of incense and too much patchouli. I gag. She rolls over and opens her eyes.

  “Wha?”

  “We need your help,” I say.

  “Who?” she asks groggily.

  “Me and Holden.”

  She sits up and scratches her head. She scratches her head a lot. I think it’s because of the dreadlocks. Honestly, if you look at them too closely, they are kind of disgusting.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  “We need a ride to school.”

  “Take the bus.”

  “We can’t. We, uh . . . missed it.”

  She eyes me suspiciously.

  “We can’t take it anymore,” I say. “I did something.”

  “You?”

  That hurt.

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t have time to explain. Can you just please give us a ride? And don’t tell Mom?”

  She sighs. “All right, fine. I’ll be there in five minutes. But don’t expect me to do this every day.”

  I don’t tell her that’s exactly what I expect. But we can deal with that later. I sneak back out of the house and find Holden leaning against the side of the garage, staring at his shoes.

  “She’s coming,” I say.

  He nods. “I knew she’d come through.”

  For a second I feel this strange jealous twinge. But I’ll always be your favorite, right? I want to say. But I don’t, because Sara arrives and we all get into the car.

  “You’re wearing too much cologne,” Sara says to Holden after we’ve safely pulled out of the driveway.

  I sit forward from the backseat and sniff. She has a point. I roll down my window a crack.

  Holden adjusts the front seat so he can lean back, all casual.

  “You think I’m going to do this every day now, don’t you?” Sara says.

  “Yes,” he answers.

  “Are you going to tell me what really happened?”

  I think this is the longest they’ve gone without arguing or being mean to each other. It feels weird.

  “Fern punched one of Trudy’s idiot nephews in the face yesterday.”

  The car swerves as Sara looks at me in the rearview mirror in shock. “Fern! Are you crazy? I didn’t know you were violent!”

  Holden turns around and points at me. “Fern’s violent,” he says, and cracks up.

  “Shut up. I only did it because of you.”

  “That was very wrong,” Sara says, imitating our dad. “God, I wish I could have seen that. Did you get him good? Which one was it?”

  I look at the slight bruises on the knuckles of my right hand and feel a twinge of pride. “I got him pretty good. I don’t know which one it was. They look the same.”

  Sara shakes her head. “Heh. Yeah, well, twins are like that. Wow, Tooty must have totally freaked out.”

  “Tooty?”

  “Yeah, that’s what we used to call her ’cause the bus reeked so bad. Does she still wear her stupid hat?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wow, Ferny. Punching Tooty’s nephew in the face. I never knew you had it in you.”

  I lean back in the seat again and look out the window. I feel my mouth turn into a smile. Me, either, I think.

  RAN IS WAITING FOR ME at m
y locker. Today his T-shirt says BEHOLD.

  “Did you take the bus?” he asks.

  “Nope,” I say.

  He smiles. “I knew you’d figure it out!”

  Cassie comes dashing over to join us.

  “Behold,” Cassie says, staring at his chest.

  “Yes,” Ran says.

  Cassie glances at me. I shrug. What Cassie doesn’t understand is that Ran isn’t the kind of person you ask, “Why?” He wants you to figure things out for yourself.

  I stuff my bag in my locker and grab my books. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

  I spend the day at school rushing from class to class, hoping I won’t pass the Things in the halls and kicking myself for not realizing I’m still going to have to take the bus home. During last period, I have study hall. The class is packed. Our teacher’s name is Mrs. Drabble, but everyone calls her Mrs. Dribble because she’s old and has a reputation of falling asleep at her desk and drooling. Ran has vowed that if this happens, he will wake her up. Cassie thinks that is very heroic of him. Of course.

  Today Mrs. Dribble has a thermos on her desk that she sips from almost exactly every two minutes. Mrs. Dribble is also known for screaming at you if you talk during study hall, so everyone is very quiet. You can practically hear the electric clock slowly buzzing the second hand forward. I count down the minutes until I will be sitting on the bus with the Things. Twenty-seven. I look over at Ran, who is writing something fast and furious in his tiny journal. He calls it his idea book. He must have a pretty good one.

  Cassie sits behind him reading her social studies book and taking notes. Every so often she leans forward as if she’s trying to look over Ran’s shoulder and read from his journal. I’m sure Ran notices, which is another reason Cassie is doomed when it comes to her chances with him.

  I try to concentrate on my geometry homework for a while, but the numbers blur together. I switch to English, but I keep reading the same paragraph over and over again. I stare at the clock. I swear the minute hand is moving backward. I watch Mrs. Dribble take a sip from her thermos and wonder what’s in there that makes her smile just a tiny bit after every sip.

  Twelve minutes.

  When the bell finally rings, I nearly get trampled as everyone makes a run for the door. The halls are so crowded, I can barely make my way to my locker.